"Yes. Her people intend to spend the winter in Hong-Kong. So do I. If the old man and my beloved brother are only sufficiently obliging to depart in peace with reasonable expeditiousness, I shall be Lord Lewesthorpe. You know what that means in the colony. I haven't yet seen the tradesman's daughter who could resist. They are all falling over each other in their willingness to exchange their money for a title. Quite envious of the preëminent success of their fair American cousins, as the newspapers say, in getting so many titles knocked down to them. The mother is ready to bid mine up. The decayed Lewesthorpe fortunes need the money more than I need the girl."
Drunk as he was getting to be, De Vaux was disgusted with the callousness of his companion. He sat silent for a few minutes, looking straight at Carteret out of his bulging, bloodshot eyes. Then he blurted out:
"Carteret, what are you going to do with the Chinese girl?"
"Nothing in particular," was the reply, with a cynical laugh. "Any of you fellows can have her, if you want her. If not, and the French take this beastly island, one of them will take her. They are generally ready for an affaire d'amour."
"And you are going to desert that Chinese girl and her child—your child—and let them go to the devil? And then you're going to ask Miss MacAllister to marry you, she of course knowing nothing of the other?"
"Of course. Why not? It won't hurt her so long as she doesn't know anything about it. If she does find it out afterwards, she can make the best of it. It would be the same if she married any other man."
"Carteret, you are a scoundrel.... 'Pon my soul! ... That's what you are—a double-dyed scoundrel."
Carteret rose to his feet and faced De Vaux across the table. His face was pale and ugly:
"Come now, De Vaux. A little of that goes a long way. If I am a scoundrel, you are five times as much a scoundrel. For, if my arithmetic and memory are right, that is just the number of half-breed youngsters I counted in your house up river."
De Vaux stood for some moments gasping for breath and struggling to get control of himself. He was dangerously near the apoplectic fit which had been so often foretold for him. But he passed the danger point, recovered himself, and said: